Articulatory plurality is a property of lexical plurals in sign language

Abstract

Sign languages make use of paired articulators (the two hands), hence manual signs may be either one- or two-handed. Although two-handedness has previously been regarded a purely formal feature, studies have argued morphologically two-handed forms are associated with some types of inflectional plurality. Moreover, recent studies across sign languages have demonstrated that even lexically two-handed signs share certain semantic properties. In this study, we investigate lexically plural concepts in ten different sign languages, distributed across five sign language families, and demonstrate that such concepts are preferentially represented with two-handed forms, across all the languages in our sample. We argue that this is because the signed modality with its paired articulators enables the languages to iconically represent conceptually plural meanings.

Visual Iconicity Across Sign Languages: Large-Scale Automated Video Analysis of Iconic Articulators and Locations

“…Any sign can be produced with either one or two hands . This dichotomy has initially mostly been treated merely as a phonological feature of signs (van der Hulst, 1996 ), perhaps because the distribution of one- and two-handed signs across sign language lexicons seems to be 50/50 (Börstell et al, 2016 ; Crasborn and Sáfár, 2016 ), suggesting a random distribution 3 . However, it has been shown that the number of hands used in a sign can be attributed to meaning, based on the iconic mapping between the articulators (e.g., the hands) and (parts of) a referent, for example as plural/reciprocal alternations (Pfau and Steinbach, 2003 , 2006 , 2016 ) or multiple entities (e.g., Dudis, 2004 ; Zwitserlood et al, 2012 ).…”

“…For example, Lepic et al ( 2016 ) showed that while the distribution between one- and two-handed signs in any random sign language lexicon appears balanced and arbitrary, there is significant overlap in which meanings are encoded by two-handed signs across languages. Using what the authors term articulatory plurality , Börstell et al ( 2016 ) argue that sign languages are able to map plural referents onto the plural articulators. Börstell et al ( 2016 ) and Lepic et al ( 2016 ) show that sign languages favor two-handed sign forms across languages to represent lexically plural concepts.…”

“…Using what the authors term articulatory plurality , Börstell et al ( 2016 ) argue that sign languages are able to map plural referents onto the plural articulators. Börstell et al ( 2016 ) and Lepic et al ( 2016 ) show that sign languages favor two-handed sign forms across languages to represent lexically plural concepts. Lexical plurals are concepts that carry some form of inherent plurality in their semantics, for example reciprocals , events/relationships necessarily involving multiple participants (“kiss,” “argue,” “friend”) (Haspelmath, 2007 ; Acquaviva, 2008 ), and mass/dual/plural groups or objects , involving multiple members/parts (“army,” “socks,” “gloves”) (Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 2004 ; Acquaviva, 2008 , 2016 ; Wisniewski, 2010 ; Lauwers and Lammert, 2016 ; Mihatsch, 2016 ).…”

Pluralia tantum nouns and the theory of features: a typology of nouns with non-canonical number properties

“…But this is part of a more general issue, the limited focus of much experimental research (see the recent survey by Acuña-Fariña 2016). Research on pluralia tantum has recently been extended to sign languages (Börstell et al 2016).…”

Predicative reduplication: Functions, their relationships and iconicities

“…For example, signing offers continuous gestures to represent continuous events (e.g. Liddell 2003: 45), variable gesture speed to represent variable event duration (Kuhn 2015), the use of two hands where one is usual to represent emphasis or plurality (Borstell et al 2016), and reversible gestures to represent reciprocity (e.g. Liddell 2003: 119-121, Borstell et al 2016), none of which is possible with speech.…”